Project description

EMO-FUNDETT: PROPER is one of the coordinated projects funded by the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (FFI2013-47792-C2-2-P), under the head project entitled EMO-FUNDETT (Emotion and language ‘at work’: The discursive emotive/evaluative FUNction in DiffErent Texts and contexts within corporate and institutional work”). Our main general research objective is to systematically analyze emotive discourse from a linguistic, pragmatic and discursive perspective. Within this general frame of reference, the Persuasion Project focuses on the study of verbal and non-verbal discursive strategies used in persuasive discourse in professional and institutional contexts from a contrastive (English-Spanish) perspective.The relevance of emotion (pathos) in persuasion was pointed out way back in the IV century B.C. by Aristotle in his treatise (The Art of) Rhetoric. However, he also grounded persuasion on two other appeals that play a decisive role: building your credibility (ethos) and using logical arguments or reasons (logos). Although emotion carries a heavy a load in every persuasive act, used in isolation with the aim of convincing our audience can be considered fallacious and, even, manipulative. Thus, we look into the connection of the emotive and persuasive functions of language with the final aim of discovering to what extent they are interconnected and what other factors are involved in persuasive discourse.